Sunday, March 19, 2017

My hometown of Ocala
sits dead-center in the middle of Florida. It's a one-time small
town hoping to go big-city. Some of us would like to build a wall
around the city so we can vet the tens of thousands of people who
move here each year. But local politicians, like national
politicos, want to keep our borders open. They see green while some
of us see smog-choked traffic jams and a depleted aquifer.

Ocala
rarely makes national headlines. But on Monday, March 12, just ahead
of the one cold snap this year, local and national media began reporting that a
cobra was missing from an Ocala home. Not just any cobra, but a
suphan cobra. Only two-feet long, with gold and brown camouflage (like the leaves in my yard), the suphan's poison is deadly. CNN, Fox News, CBS and most other outlets breathlessly reported the event.

Brian
Purdy, the cobra's owner, called to report the snake MIA. Soon the
neighborhood was swarming with police, EMTs, and wildlife officials. WTVM reported
that the snake “got loose while [Purdy] was at work and an
apprentice was taking care of the reptile. He says the snake jumped
at him when he lifted the cover of its cage, and then slithered away.
After the owner and apprentice could not locate the snake, they
called wildlife officials to help.”

Authorities,
out of their element and wisely unwilling to put their own lives at
risk, called in snake experts from around the state. Inside the
house, they found a gaboon viper, an African bush viper and two large venomous lizards. Purdy
has a license to own the reptiles. For a week now, experts
have repeatedly searched the home and surrounding areas, but the
suphan still has not been located.

Fortunately,
suphan cobras are warm-blooded and unlikely to stray far because of
the cool nights. But officials state that they will strike if
they're disturbed. The weather is beginning to warm
up again, and authorities are afraid the snake will be on the move.

Neighbors
are understandably jittery. Dogs and children are locked away as residents tip-toe from their
homes to their cars.

The Washington Post reports that one expert described how it feels to be bitten by a cobra. “Snake bites are generally very painful and cobra bites really hurt,” he said. “It’s usually almost like a burning pain, which evolves into a deep aching pain that makes you crush your eyes. It’s real deep and real hard, right around the bite area, but the burning pain is right around the fang punctures.” Another expert stated that a bite from a two-foot suphan cobra could kill an elephant.

But not to worry. Anti-venom expert Jeffery Fobb from Miami Dade
Fire Rescue stated that protocols are in place in case someone is
bitten. “The
good thing,” he said, “is we're located on an air field and
there is an air field next to the nearest hospital to the incident
in Ocala. So a fixed winged aircraft can fly the [anti-venom] up
there. We already have it packaged and ready to go in case there is
an emergency.”

For
real? Why isn't the anti-venom already here? Miami is 300 miles from Ocala.

What happened to the snake? Did it escape from the house and die in the cold weather? Did one of the large poisonous lizards eat it? Or is it hiding in some cubby hole waiting for the activity to clear?

Here's hoping the snake is found and no one gets hurt.

Then Ocala can settle back into its nice, cozy old-fashioned ways, and the media will disappear. I, for one, can't wait.

(One other thing: that part about building a wall around the city is a joke so don't send me nasty emails about it. The rest of the article is true.)

Monday, March 6, 2017

Enter
the three-storied maze of rooms filled with ghosts. You'll find jars
of baby feet; pyramids of trash bags containing fetal remains;
skeletons of cats that died from thousands of attacking fleas; floors
with walked-on feces; bloody walls; and urine-stained furniture.
You'll enter room after room, chamber after chamber, and nook after
nook flooded with the foul stench of death.

But
most of all, you'll encounter the memories of children who lived a
few moments, or a few hours, then were snipped into eternity.
(“Snipping” was Dr. Kermit Gosnell's term for using scissors to
cut the spinal cords of infants who survived his abortion attempts.)
Another term he liked to use was “ensuring fetal demise.”

Gosnell
tells a sordid story that most of us can't imagine.

In
2013, Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first degree murder
and one count of involuntary manslaughter. The involuntary
manslaughter charge was brought when he killed Karnamaya Mongar, who
came to him for an abortion. The procedure was badly botched, and
she died a few hours later. Gosnell attempted to cover up the death
(as he had at least two others), and was successful for a time due to
the indifference of the Pennsylvania Department of Health and other
social service systems. The three first degree murder charges were
for babies born alive and murdered by Gosnell or his staff.

Dr.
Kermit Gosnell littered his Philadelphia abortion clinic with
cast-offs, employees barely living above the flatline, to coin a
phrase. For instance, Lynda Williams was bipolar, a drug addict, and
had only an eighth grade education, but she became Gosnell's
“anesthesiologist.” Assistant district attorney Joanne Pescatore
said Williams “was in charge of mixing the concoctions and giving
the anesthesia to patients while the doctor wasn't there.” In
reality, she rarely used Gosnell's cheat sheet that told her which
drugs to use, but administered what she thought was necessary. None
of his other employees were qualified for the positions they held.

This
proved fatal to Mongar, an immigrant from Bhutan. Williams
administered numerous doses of Demerol, anesthetics, and other drugs
in an attempt to sedate the frail patient.

In
addition to the Women's Medical Society abortion clinic, Gosnell ran
a pill mill, selling prescription drugs to dealers. (This, in fact,
was the reason for the initial criminal investigation of his clinic.)
He and his staff illegally sold Xanax, OxyContin, promethazine, and
Percolet to drug dealers.

When
cops busted Gosnell for drug crimes, they learned that he had been
killing live babies for thirty years. Because the statute of
limitations for infanticide is only two years in Pennsylvania, and
because he destroyed much of the evidence, Gosnell was charged with
only seven murders.

As
the case unfolded, Big Media attempted to ignore it. Several
reporters later admitted that the crimes did not fit their
“narrative.” Finally, a storm of emails, blogs from the
right-wing press, and the writings of a few respected columnists
persuaded the Washington
Post,
New
York Times,
CNN, and others to give in and cover the case.

After
his conviction, Gosnell was sentenced to life plus 30 years in
prison. Eight members of his staff received lesser sentences,
including his wife, Pearl, who sometimes helped at the clinic.

Despite
the sensationalistic title of the book, this is not a hastily-written
pot-boiler. The authors studied thousands of pages of court
documents, including the damning grand jury report. They interviewed
cops, attorneys, prosecutors, some of Gosnell's employees, and even
Gosnell himself. The doctor has shown no hint of remorse, and
insists that history will vindicate him.

Whether
you're pro-abortion or anti-abortion, I highly recommend this book.